Speed Racer

Posted on September 16, 2008 at 8:00 am

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for sequences of action, some violence, language and brief smoking.
Profanity:	Some brief bad words, s-word bleeped but still obvious, character gives "the finger"
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense acton violence and peril including flesh-eating fish, bomb, guns, kung fu, and racing accidents, sad off-screen death
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	May 9, 2008
Date Released to DVD:	September 16, 2008

Andy and Larry Wachowski, the folks behind the Matrix trilogy, have taken the iconic but decidedly low-tech 1960’s Japanese cartoon character and put the pedal to the metal with dazzling effects and electrifying action. Do what Speed Racer does — put on your red socks and GO!

Even as a child, Speed Racer could only think of one thing, making cars go as fast as possible. Not surprising — he was surrounded by racing. The family business was race cars. His father (John Goodman) built them and his older brother drove them. When his brother is killed in a crash, Speed (Emile Hirsch) takes over. On and off the race track he battles the competition, even when they do not fight fairly. By his side are his parents, his little brother, his and his girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci, looking like a real-life version of an anime heroine with her enormous eyes).

The plot is pretty much the same as the cartoon series, meaning light-weight and a little incoherent. Basically, evil forces are trying to stop Speed from winning the race. The sections with the kid brother and his chimp are slow points for everyone over age 9 but it is all great fun, with a hero to believe in and visuals that are both reassuringly retro and stunningly innovative. Every wallpaper and fabric, each car, helmet, and racetrack is meticulously designed to evoke a mash-up between Speed’s Norman Rockwell-style, solidly heartland home and the souped-up super space age world outside. The Wachowskis re-invent the color wheel with reds and yellows that make fire engines and school buses seem pale.

The dialogue is pared down to essentials: “You think you can drive a car and change the world? It doesn’t work like that!” “Maybe not, but it’s the only thing I know how to do and I gotta do something.” The plot is no more significant (or confusing) than in the cartoon originals. All we need to know is that in the world of Speed Racer you can drive a car and change the world — if you drive it very, very fast.

Rocketeer

Posted on September 15, 2008 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	PG
Profanity:	Very mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Wartime violence, guns, explosions
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	1991

In honor of my son’s birthday this week, my DVD pick is one of his childhood favorites: Rocketeer. Based on a comic book that recreated the deco feel of the pre-WWII era, this Disney movie has a 1940s feel — with 1990s special effects. Cliff Secord (Bill Campbell) is a stunt flyer who discovers a contraption designed by Howard Hughes that, when strapped to his back and combined with a helmet for steering, allows him to fly. The equipment is being sought by the U.S. government and by thugs in the employ of sleek Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton), a swashbuckling movie star and Nazi sympathizer. Not a box office success when it first opened (“Terminator 2” opened the same week), it has been more successful on DVD because of its exciting story, top-notch performances (with Bill Campbell, sometime James Bond Timothy Dalton and Oscar-winners Jennifer Connelly and Alan Arkin), and gorgeous visual design and effects. It’s is the kind of movie they say they don’t make anymore, an old-fashioned popcorn pleasure with action, adventure, romance, a zeppelin, a pretty girl, and a guy who straps a rocket on his back and soars into the sky. NOTE: The movie has some comic-book style violence and some tense and scary moments. One of the bad guys has a misshapen face that may be upsetting to younger kids.

Forbidden Kingdom

Posted on September 9, 2008 at 6:00 pm

forbidden%20kingdom.jpg It’s not a good movie, but it is a lot of fun. It’s a fantasy with three things going for it: it does not take itself too seriously, it does take the action scenes seriously, and it includes both of the most popular martial arts movie stars working today, Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

Michael Angarano plays Jason, a generic loner-teen role that does not give him a chance to show off the impeccable comic timing he displayed as Elliot in “Will and Grace.” He seems to spend most of his time hanging out in Chinatown, renting kung fu movies and talking to Old Hop the ancient proprietor of the pawnshop (Jackie Chan under old-age make-up). When some bullies attack them, Hop hands Jason the mysterious staff and asks him to return it to its rightful owner. And Jason wakes up in ancient China. He quickly figures out how to understand Chinese, and meets up with Lu Yan, a tipsy immortal (Chan, in a nod to his early “Drunken Master” hits). They embark on a journey to return the staff to its owner, the Monkey King (Jet Li), who has been turned into a statue by the evil Jade Warlord. And they are joined by Golden Sparrow (Liu Yifei), who plans to kill the Jade Warlord to avenge the death of her parents, and Silent Monk (Li again), who first has to fight Lu Yan just because that is why we all bought tickets. “We can kill each other when it’s over,” they agree, deciding to work together to help Jason return the staff to the Monkey King.

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Action/Adventure Fantasy

Fly Me to the Moon

Posted on August 14, 2008 at 6:02 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Mild peril and violence
Diversity Issues:	Stereotyped portrayal of female characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 13, 2008

Don’t try to swat that enormous insect buzzing a few inches above your popcorn. It’s a hologram-like image hovering in front of you and it is part of the movie. Yes, you have to wear the clunky glasses, but within moments you will forget all about them and be caught up in the pure magic of the 3D technology in the first feature-length animated film completely produced in that format. It is stunningly beautiful and almost hyper-real in its depth of field and meticulousness of detail. The virtual reality is so believable you will feel as though you can reach into each shot and rearrange the furniture.

Unfortunately, the dull characters and weak story keep getting in the way of the gorgeously produced backgrounds. The plot about three young flies who hitch a ride on Apollo 11’s trip to the moon is almost an afterthought.

The starring role here is played by the techies, who focused not just on the 3D effects but also on the science and engineering of the Apollo 11 mission. They relied on NASA records, blueprints of the rocket ships and equipment, and even the audio recordings of the flight to bring extra verisimilitude to the screen. This part of the movie is a flat-out marvel, and the shots of the moon are breathtaking.

The artists who designed the environments designed a community for the houseflies that has some clever detail and some lovely touches, especially the rippling water, so tactile you may feel a little damp.

But all of the imagination seems to end there. The history of animated movies is abuzz with cute cartoon insects, from one of the very first animated features, “Hoppity Goes to Town” to the dapper Jiminy Cricket in “Pinocchio,” “A Bug’s Life”, and “The Ant Bully.” But there is no effort of any kind to give the characters here any distinctive fly qualities. They just look like little humans with antennae and wings, and they are almost interchangeable, with each assigned just one identifying characteristic. One is the leader, one has glasses, and one is fat. Then there are the Soviet flies who want to prevent the rocket from reaching the moon before they do, just poor copies of Boris, Natasha, and Fearless Leader from “Rocky and Bullwinkle.”

But the biggest disappointment is the script, as arid as last year’s Tang. It fails to make us care about the characters or identify with the flies’ dream of going to the moon. It was inspired by a fly grandfather’s reminiscence of saving pioneering pilot Amelia Earhart by flying up her nose (I am not kidding). It is not based on any interest or understanding beyond a vague quest for adventure. It assumes much too much knowledge from today’s children about the space race and the 1960’s. Kids are likely to be confused by the Cold War bad guys and the retro portrayal of the female characters. The girl flies toss their ponytails and giggle and the lead fly’s Stepford-like mother is pretty much limited to fussing over her larvae babies, making dinner, and fainting(!) whenever she is upset. The action scenes are poorly choreographed and hard to follow and the comedy tends toward potty humor and fat jokes. And then the big happy ending is followed by a live action coda with real-life astronaut Buzz Aldrin reminding us that it was all pretend.

The dazzling technology just puts a spotlight on the lackluster script, like a high-definition picture of an out-of-focus subject . If they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they tell a better story about sending some flies along for the ride?

Nim’s Island

Posted on August 6, 2008 at 8:00 am

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for mild adventure action and brief language.
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril, reference to loss of a parent, character who is scared of everything
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 4, 2008
Date Released to DVD:	August 4, 2008
Amazon.com ASIN:	B001APZMJI

A pair of heroines on opposite sides of the world team up in an eye-filling and heart-warming story from Walden Media, the latest in its series of fine films based on popular children’s literature.

Eleven year old Nim (Abigail Breslin of “Little Miss Sunshine”) and her marine biologist father, Jack (Gerard Butler), are the only human residents of a remote but idyllic South Pacific island. While Jack studies nanoplankton, Nim makes the entire island her school, with the animals as her teachers and her friends. Every few months, a supply boat brings another book by her favorite author, Alex Rover, an international man of adventure.
But Alex is really Alexandra (Jodie Foster), a writer so terrified of just about everything that she lives on canned soup, constantly sanitizes her hands, and cannot get far enough outside her front door to retrieve the mail. Alexandra has created a hero who is everything she is not – fearless and always eager to go where he has never been and try what he has never tried.

To get information for her new book, Alexandra emails Jack for details about a volcano he described in an article for National Geographic. But he is away for two days obtaining plankton samples, so Nim answers, thinking she is corresponding with the dashing Alex (also played by Butler , as envisioned by both Alexandra and Nim). By the time Alexandra realizes she is writing to an eleven-year-old, Jack is missing and Nim is alone on the island. And the woman who was terrified to walk four feet to the mailbox must go halfway around the world to help her new friend.
Husband and wife directors Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, seamlessly combine adventure, drama, comedy, and fantasy as Jack, Nim, and Alexandra have to confront their separate but often parallel fears and challenges. As Nim tightens the rope around her waist so that she can climb the volcano, Alexandra is tightening the belt of her robe and gathering her resolve to walk out the front door. All three of them find their determination tested and creativity challenged. And all find assistance from unexpected friends.

Nim is an enormously appealing heroine and it is especially welcome to have a story about a resourceful and courageous young girl. The film wisely makes her the center of the story in a way that young audiences will find empowering and Breslin’s unaffected interactions with the creatures and natural screen presence are a pleasure to watch.

Of the three characters, Nim is closest to the imaginary Alex Rover, confident and capable. She navigates the island by gliding on zip wires like a modern-day Tarzan. She not only swims with the sea lion; she teaches it to play soccer and boogie. She can fix the solar panels on the roof to get the electricity and satellite uplink back in working order, protect the newborn baby turtles from predators, rappel down the side of a volcano, and make a dinner out of mung beans and meal worms. When the island is invaded by a pirate-themed cruise ship bearing pina coladas, beach chairs, port-a-potties, and chubby Australian tourists, Nim and her animal friends set up a “Home Alone”-style series of booby-traps to scare them away.

Butler is fine as Nim’s fond, if distracted father and as the heroic Alex. And it is a treat to see Foster enjoying a comic turn in her first film for families since her Disney days, when she was Nim’s age, and shared the screen with an Oscar-winning star, Helen Hayes in “Candleshoe.” Here’s hoping when it is time for Breslin to pass on the torch to a young actress 30 years from now it will be in a movie as good as this one.

Parents should know that this film features a child and adults in peril, a brief image of a wound, some gross-out humor, and a reference to loss of a parent. There is also some intrusive product placement.

Families who see this movie should discuss why Alexandra created such a brave hero when she was so afraid of everything? Would you like to live like Nim? What would be the best part? What would you miss?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Shipwrecked and the book that inspired this movie. They will also enjoy seeing Foster and Helen Hayes in Candleshoe.